The companies have maintained publicly that the deal would not lessen competition and that it would create jobs in the United States. But the Justice Department has said that the merger would severely restrict competition, and F.C.C. officials have said that AT&T’s confidential filings indicate the merger would eliminate jobs.

AT&T needs a separate clean block of paired spectrum to implement its planned Carrier Aggregation Technology. The original intention was to use AT&T’s AWS-1 spectrum holdings for this purpose, but AT&T would be required to give up the majority of its AWS-1 holdings (1.5B MHz POPs out of ~2.5B MHz POPs) as part of the break fee for the TMO merger agreement. As a result, AT&T will also now have to look for another clean block of spectrum away from the 700MHz band to enable deployment of the Qualcomm spectrum.

Cable is the logical place for AT&T to go.

AT&T needs cable’s near nation-wide AWS spectrum, purchased but unused by their holding company, SpectrumCo. If the T-Mobile merger IS toast, then a cable’s AWS, combined with “700 MHz carrier aggregation” could be plan “B”.

AT&T might get competition from T-Mobile. T-Mobile has a nationwide AWS network. AT&T doesn’t. T-Mobile could merge with SpectrumCo in a heartbeat. AT&T, a cable competitor, first has to build a nationwide AWS network. They got nothin’, today.